


Summer Make Good for All Our Sins

by montparnasse



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 07:17:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/montparnasse/pseuds/montparnasse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A long blade, a longer memory, and <i>definitely</i> the most fun he's ever had standing up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer Make Good for All Our Sins

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this particularly scrumptious prompt on the DA kink meme:
> 
> _Remember this banter between Isabela and templar!Carver, when he uses the Chant of Light to "show" her how much man he has become? I want to see something similar, with any couple you want (through Isabela/Carver prefered) when the Chant of Light is used in dirty sexy talking._
> 
> Basically, lots of questionable use of the Chant, and also lots of verses from the Song of Songs, a fantastic idea that was not had by me but one I couldn't resist putting in here.

If you could go back far enough, flip through the pages of Carver’s mind like a tattered but sturdy (and, all right, _grouchy_ ) old book, you’d find a lot of Ferelden apples, a pretty brown-eyed girl with the sun in her eyes, references to a fantastic young woman who was never anything like a peach, a spoonful of sadness, a dash of adolescent foolishness, and a million, million inconsequential moments that swim behind his eyes like a tiny veil of stars. He may not be able to tell up from down on a washing board, but Carver Hawke has a remarkable memory, an eye for thoroughly useless detail that ranges from depressing to self-deprecating to hideously soppy, and for the most part, it’s served him well.

Like, when he’s trying to remember all the different clauses of the Order when one of his superiors barks at him, or when he needs to come up with a verse of the Chant on the spot, because those are the things Templars are supposed to remember even though no one does. Or for those times he tries to remember how the sun-drenched flutter of Merrill’s voice hits him like a bunch of butterflies when she’s telling a joke she picked up from talking to prostitutes, or the way his brother looked the day he came home from his expedition (the thing that was supposed to be _their_ expedition) and decided he’d found an enemy in his own family, because Carver—perpetually, helplessly Garrett Hawke’s Baby Brother—was incapable of making his own decisions, hardly more than a boy, young and new as the yellow on a dandelion.

Or—much more pleasantly than that last one—when he’s thinking of Isabela, about the way she looks with blood on her face, when she’s drunk with a good fight and that dagger-sharp smirk is tearing its way across her mouth. That’s a good look. That is Carver’s favorite look.

And the best part? He doesn’t even have to reach back into the murky waters of memory and dust it off today, because she’s sitting right in front of him, wiping blood off one of her blades, closing her brown, brown eyes to breathe in the smell of carnage and the sea, her gold-wrapped neck bared to the setting autumn sun.

“There’s just something about a man in uniform,” she says, though she isn’t looking at him. “Makes me tingle all over.”

Carver scoffs. “Because you know just where to stab so they bleed out in their armor?”

“Mmm, there’s that. But you’re just like a shiny piece of treasure to be unwrapped. Wine to be uncorked. That sort of thing.”

“You do like treasure,” he says, watching her rifle through someone else’s pockets. He always felt strange doing that, _wrong_ , and he imagines it would feel even worse now that he isn’t a Lowtown refugee living on stale bread and sleeping on a scratchy straw mattress.

The edges of her teeth flash over her bottom lip, and she pulls a silver ring out of the purse and slides it onto her finger. It fits like it was made for her. “I’m a magpie, Carver.” She bends over in front of him, looking through a crate for something to scavenge, and he watches her hair fall into her face, the generous swell of her very, very impressive bosom. “I keep glittery things. Wear them. Hoard them.”

“And where does men’s armor rank, there?”

She looks him up and down in a way that would have made Carver shiver when he was nineteen, her eyes sharp, discerning as a woman picking out a fresh, juicy cut of beef, but Carver isn’t nineteen anymore and he knows what to do with this, knows when to take it and run, when not to. “Somewhere below a rough-cut diamond and somewhere above a silver bangle,” she says, and her mouth is a knife that cuts a smile so smooth it drags right through Carver and sings in his blood.

He’s about to tell her that Templar armor is definitely worth more than that and he’ll let her find out just how much if she’d like to help him out of it sometime, but the moment he opens his mouth is the moment Garrett sees fit to stomp the conversation into tiny, misshapen pieces. “Let’s move, then,” he says, blinking and smiling his best I’m-Charming-And-I-Know-It smile at Carver, oblivious as he’s ever been. If Carver is honest with himself, he sort of likes that smile, sort of misses what it was like before his brother looked away for a few years and then turned around and found a man he didn’t quite recognize, but that’s a trip down a place he doesn’t want to see today. “It’s probably not worth as much as Sebastian’s, anyway. His is really _something_. Something bright. And shiny.”

The fancy priest is standing a little off to the side, fooling around with his bow while he waits for the rest of them. Carver isn’t sure how he reconciles this with being the holiest, handsomest, prissiest _bore_ in Kirkwall (after Anders, of course, except without the holy part), but he supposes it isn’t much different from what he does now, killing in the name of the Maker or Andraste and all and, wow, he has something in common with Sebastian. He doesn’t know how to feel about that.

“You’re probably right,” Isabela says, falling into step beside him and definitely eyeing Sebastian up the way Carver has seen her eye him up so many, many times before. He supposes it’s not such a bad angle, if you’re into men wedded to Andraste with more white on them than all the stone of Hightown. And—yeah. Okay. Fine. It’s actually a pretty nice view. “But I wouldn’t know. Prince Choir Boy won’t _let_ me unwrap him.”

“I have taken my vows, and I believe we’ve had this conversation once a week for at least three years now.”

“We wouldn’t keep having it if you’d just let me give your topsails a good shake.”

Sebastian shakes his head slowly and turns to her, just for a moment, and Carver realizes that somewhere between all the years spent wading through puddles of innuendo and propositions as subtle as snakebites, he’s perfected the art of meeting Isabela’s eyes and absolutely nothing else, not even allowing himself a flicker downward to where she has her arms folded underneath her breasts, pushing them up even higher. It’s enough to give any man (or woman) a sudden crisis of faith, even more than her usual amount of exposed bosom. “You are a trial,” he says, and turns around before that part of him that doesn’t know how to repent gets any ideas.

“Try me sometime. I’ll do for you what Andraste can’t,” she grins and tosses her head back, beautiful and stubborn and utterly infuriating, laughing that low, breathy laugh like bells. “The Canticle of Trials has _nothing_ on me, sweet thing.”

“That’s actually just a few verses,” Carver interjects for no reason at all other than being so used to reciting it he can practically hear the drone of his own voice in his dreams. “Doesn’t take much to get through.”

Isabela harrumphs at him, mock-pouting, shrugging. “And I suppose you’re all religious now, too. Such a shame. I’d have loved to find out just how _big_ you’ve gotten under all that metal.”

“Do you know how long the Chant is? How hard it is to memorize?”

“You underestimate what a heathen I am,” she says, flashing him that crooked sailor’s smile, “but do go on. You know I’m so _fond_ of hard things when it involves men in skirts.”

And, that. It’s like a shock to his brain and between his legs all at once, and she’s still looking at him all sideways and pinch-mouthed when Carver has an idea that is either the best or the worst that’s ever struck him on the spur of the moment in an old, not-quite abandoned building. His brother is far enough ahead that he doesn’t have to worry about the Wise Elder Hawke’s disapproving clucking, and Sebastian is—actually, Sebastian is probably within earshot but Carver is almost certain he tunes him out half the time anyway, possibly because of all the blasphemies. So. It’s just him and Isabela and the long tapestry of memory that is either going to get him laughed at or shoved into the nearest closet for a few glorious minutes.

But. He’s not nineteen anymore; with age comes confidence, and with confidence comes the twitchy, quick-trigger mathematics of a calculated risk. And risks are great—if you can weigh them out before you take them, and he’s never been much good at that but he figures this one is pretty safe.

If Isabela wants to hear about the Chant of Light, Carver will tell her _all_ about the Chant of Light.

So he straightens up, drops his voice a little lower, and recites:  “‘In your heart shall burn an unquenchable flame, all-consuming, never satisfied.’”

Isabela makes a sound halfway between a laugh and an interested sort of hum. “And that’s why you have to learn to take satisfaction for yourself, sweet thing.”

“The Chant teaches that, too.”

“Oh?” She cocks her head at him, one hand on her hip and the other on the back of a knife, her finger running back and forth over the dull side, the only lover she’ll ever been faithful to. The motion is mesmerizing, equal parts arousing and frightening, enough to make a lesser man back away slowly and sleep with one eye open for the foreseeable future, but Carver is not a lesser man. “Come on, then. _Preach_ to me, Ser Carver,” she says, and her voice is so smooth, peach-warm, cuts straight through to his middle.

“‘Many are her enemies, the darkness set against her,’” he says, barely above a whisper, “‘but her hand sustains her; she does not falter as she presses through the warmth of the Beyond.’”

She’s sauntering just a little closer to him now, walking hips-first the way she always does and swaying just out of reach. “Aren’t you just _vigorous_ ,” she draws out, and Carver wonders what it would be like to wrap his hands around her hips, run them down her thighs. “I suppose they teach you Templars how to penetrate all those tight, steel-forged defenses?”

By now, he’s near enough match his steps to hers and feeling just the right amount of audacious to let his gauntlet brush her wrist, so soft it might not have happened at all. “You know what they say about men with two-handers.”

“Mmm, don’t I.” Her hip bumps into his and she sidles a bit farther away again. “A big, heavy blade won’t be much good if you don’t know how to use it, though.”

Garrett seems to be reading through some note he picked up off a barrel of something Carver doesn’t want to know about, captivated as he always is by the architecture of decrepit, centuries-old buildings and Carta thugs, and Sebastian is still close by but apparently unaware that Carver is defiling the Chant just a few paces behind him. It’s getting increasingly difficult to keep track of them because all he can see and hear is Isabela and all he can think about are the very pleasant, very sacrilegious places this could lead.

He’ll just have to give them a small, Maker-approved push.

“‘His Light is a pillar of marble, set on bases of pure gold. Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is His blade, and His fruit is sweet to my taste.’”

“So in addition to the mage-hating and the religious rubbish, they fill your heads with delusions of grandeur,” she chuckles, tossing her head back and looking Carver over again and, Maker, he loves it when she does that, the way the light plays in her eyes while she works out how long it would take to get him out of his armor before Garrett has time to notice they’re both missing. He’s seen her look at other men like that half a thousand times before, and being on the receiving end of it makes his mouth go a little dry. “Unless you can back it up, of course.”

“I’m not a liar. Lying is a sin.”

She smiles like the sea. “So is half of everything that’s worth doing. I don’t see it stopping you.”

“Sin is more like a scale, the way I see it. If I have to lob someone’s head off once in a while in the name of the Maker, I’ll just give of myself a little more freely than usual and it’ll all even out.”

“A sin in itself to let all that firm Ferelden _stamina_ go to waste.”

“‘And Eileen spoke unto the masses:  “My hearth is yours, my sword is yours, all my untiring flesh is yours.’”

There’s a hand trailing down the small of his back in the spot where there is no armor, so gentle it’s almost ticklish, and it sends a shock up his spine and all the way down to his toes. He wants to catch her wrist. He wants her to push him into the nearest wall. He wants to kiss her until they’re both breathless and dizzy with it. He doesn’t say any of this. “ _How_ you’ve grown,” Isabela murmurs, and he watches her watching him when she gives him a little squeeze. “So sturdy. So… _manly_.” She’s running her hand down his arm now, lingering over the nicks and scuffs of the armor until she gets to his gauntlets and flexes her fingers over his knuckles, and he can’t actually feel it because of the metal and all in the way but the sight of it is enough to make his heart lurch forward and then start ticking like a time bomb in his chest. It’s nice. Maddening, but nice.

“I suppose you know what to do with these, too?” He turns his hand over so she can examine the underside of his gauntlet, and she presses up closer so he can feel her thigh against his, and—and—whoever designed Templar armor really didn’t have their priorities straight. Like when you’ve got a beautiful woman eyeing you up like a five-course meal and you’re covered with more metal than a foundry. It’s just not fair. “I could always use a pair of good, broad hands on deck.”

“All my untiring flesh, remember,” he says, his voice a low rumble in his throat when she presses her forehead into the back of his neck. He inhales, sharp, and resolves to thank the Maker for his good memory tonight, because the sight of Isabela latched onto his side would be enough to make the Divine herself reconsider her entire philosophy. Or, that might just be the leftovers of the Ferelden heathen that will never wash away. Who knows. “‘My Lady’s head crowns her like the Vimmark Mountains. Her hair is like a royal tapestry; the Maker is held captive by its tresses.’”

“Ooh,” she purrs, honey-thick and not half as sweet, “tell me more, Ser Carver.”

The lips at his neck are trailing up, up, up to the thin skin at his jaw, and they would be incredibly distracting but Templars are not permitted heedlessness. “‘How beautiful She is, and how pleasing,’” he manages through the jolt that snags down his whole body when she tugs his earlobe between her teeth. “‘Her stature is like that of the palm, and Her breasts are like clusters of fruit.’”

“‘Clusters of fruit?’ Do you devout types say that to all the girls? How _droll_.”

“‘I said, “I will climb that palm tree. I will take hold of its fruit.”’”

Isabela laughs, all bells and waves. “There’s a verse in the Chant about climbing Andraste like a tree? The Sisters are reciting all the wrong verses.”

“It’s supposed to be a parable. Allegory. All that,” he mutters. “But, you know. The best answers are usually the simplest and all.”

“So they are, sweet thing,” she breathes out against his shoulder. “So they are,” and he barely has time to think of how bright and wild and beautiful her eyes are before both her hands are on his shoulders, pushing him hard into the alcove he didn’t know was right beside him. His back bounces off the wall, his brother is nowhere in sight and Isabela is pressed up against him, looking at him like he’s a medium-rare Antivan steak with a side of something strong and sweet, and when she kisses him, his whole brain fizzles and just _breaks_.

It’s hot. And smooth. And really, ridiculously good; it takes him a few seconds to catch his breath, and when he does, he realizes she’s already working on the buckles of his breastplate, and then he thinks of how it’s going to feel with his armor off, when it’s just the full length of her body against his and—and—Andraste’s scorched arse, she’s kissing him again and he’s certain his brain is about to leak out his ears.

“Come on,” she’s saying, her hands still working and, yes, she’s definitely done this before. “Tell me how you’re going to give yourself so very _freely_.”

“‘In secret they worked, magic upon magic, all their power and vanity they turned against the Veil,’” she pulls his breastplate off and lets it clang to the ground like the obnoxious hindrance it’s become, “‘until at last, it gave way.’”

She pulls at one of his gauntlets until it slips off, and he takes care of the other while she busies herself in the rest of him, stopping to bite his neck when he finally, blessedly slides his hands around her hips and feels the soft, freckled skin, the outline of her underclothes. It’s even better than he imagined. “What, don’t I get a demonstration, Ser Chant-Bashing Two-Hander?” she pouts, sulky-sultry, teeth playing at his jaw. She smells like sweat and the sea and the way she sighs when he slips his hands under her shirt makes him tingle down to his toes. “A girl likes to give these things a ride before she puts all her cards on the table.”

“All her cards?” He lets his hands drift up, around her waist, unfastening the laces at her front and then back down again, squeezing her bottom and trailing over the slope of her thighs. Maker, but she’s beautiful, soft and golden in the dirty light filtering in through the windows, shifting and melting under his hands and she tastes like spice and ale and it’s absolutely fucking intoxicating.

“Oh, maybe not all,” she says, and her hands only falter a little at his shoulders when he pushes her underclothes out of the way and presses a finger inside, a bit more when he leans down to catch her mouth again and lets her tongue flick past his lips, and he feels her gasp into his mouth.

“‘O Creator, see me kneel:  For I walk only where You would bid me,’” and his voice is so low, so rough around the edges that he hardly recognizes it as his own, “‘stand only in places You have blessed, sing only the words You place in my throat.’”

He moves slowly, one and then another, listening to her hiss at his neck until the piece comes free and she rocks her hips into his hand, pushing up against him so he can finally, finally feel her against him, all those gorgeous curves and angles, the hard, sharp promise of a knife at her belt. “‘Touch me with fire that I may be cleansed,’” he growls, moving his fingers in leisurely circles over her clit, his other hand sneaking up her shirttail and lacing through the notches of her spine. “‘Tell me I have sung to Your approval.’” He does it again, slower, harder, and Isabela moans out like a siren on the shore, rich and full and it’s the most utterly beautiful thing he’s ever seen, crackling across his skin like ball lightning because she’s doing it for _him_.

“Approved.” She pulls away, her eyes wide and dark as she goes for her knife and—wait, why is she going for her knife? “I don’t think I’m patient enough for unwrapping today,” she hisses, and she’s going to—yes, she’s slicing the ties of his undershirt and it’s completely ruined now but he doesn’t care at all.

While she saws through the last of his shirt like some sort of mad seamstress, he pushes her tunic-dress-surcoat-whatever-she-calls-it off her shoulders and drags his palms along her back, her collarbone, over her breasts and down her stomach, everything he can reach; it’s all too much and not enough but the feel of her skin and muscle underneath his calloused palms is just bloody _glorious_. “I don’t mind being torn open.”

“Ooh, Carver,” she whispers, peeling his shirt off, teeth on his neck and her tongue sharp with want, “that’s just not the thing you say to a pirate.”

“Should I preach, instead?” His fingers trace nonsense patterns up the inside of her thigh and she arches into him, her breasts heavy against his chest. “Do you need to know about the Light? How deep it penetrates?”

“Tell me,” she purrs, and then she grabs him and flips them around so she’s got her back to the wall, her tunic open, her eyes huge and wild and her lips so _red_ that it sucks all the breath out of his lungs and makes him shiver. “Just how _big_ is this yarn you’re spinning?”

And then, she’s sliding her hand down the waist of his totally manly, totally sanctified skirt, under his smallclothes and around his cock, her wrist moving fluidly, and he’s definitely never been this hard in his life. Not with that elf at the Rose. Not with that girl behind Barlin’s shed in Lothering. Never _ever_.

“‘Above them, a river of Light,’” he groans, rough, and, oh, how many gold rings is she wearing? “‘Before them the throne of Heaven, waiting.’”

“Heaven sounds like a bit of a bore.” She’s arching her back and going slow, too slow, her fingertips gently grazing his balls, each stroke of her hand sending a white-hot shock through him until his breath hitches and, and, Maker, she’s going faster now and the whole world narrows down to Isabela and the pleasure shooting through him. He catches her mouth again and this time she tastes even better, swallowing all the things he’s never learned how to say even with age, the sleek, gentle words in the language of desire that she can translate like poetry. It’s hot, and terribly exciting, and her hand is still moving when he pulls away, so agonizingly slow again, deliberate, and really, really _good_. “I’d rather be rotten right through. You’ll have more fun that way.”

“No soul to speak of?” He rocks into her touch, his fingers skirting up beneath her shirttails again.

“I sold my soul to the sea, sweet thing,” she sighs, biting his neck again, her fingers trailing lightly over the length of his cock one last time before she pulls her hand away. It’s thoroughly depressing, and he might have been inclined to beg or at least make some really whiny noises if she wasn’t taking his own hands and pressing them against her, down her sweaty stomach and between her thighs, into the wet, silky skin, whispering, “But you’re welcome to come inside and… have a look for it.”

And. Well.

It fries his brain for a good five seconds, and when everything registers again—Isabela, flushed and messy and fucking _beautiful_ against the wall, her eyes on him, pushing his finger into her mouth and _sucking_ —it almost makes him dizzy. But. He’s not nineteen anymore (and if he reminds himself enough, it will totally sink in); this part is hardly complicated. He knows what to do with the hands tugging his skirt and smallclothes down his thighs, with the voice laughing, whispering, “Come on, Ser Carver. That two-hander isn’t just there to look impressive, is it?”

A two-hander _is_ actually a tricky thing, if you’re not used to it; if you’re not strong enough, if you don’t know just how much weight to throw into it. Fortunately for both of them, Carver is intimately familiar with the nuances of such a big blade and just how to handle it.

“‘He thrust his hand through the lock on the chest; Her heart began to pound for him.’” He leans in, growls the verses out behind her ear and feels her shudder, feels her hands stretch up his chest. “‘He arose to open for Her, and his hands dripped with myrrh, his fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the bolt.’” And then it’s just a sharp hiss of breath, her leg wrapped around his waist, and he’s inside her with a shift of hips, his teeth on her neck, her fingers wound tightly in his hair.

It’s slow at first, shallow thrusts that drag high, tiny sounds from her throat, but it’s warm and wet and tight around his cock and he could just get lost in this, all of _this_ , heat and rhythm and the constellations of freckles on Isabela’s shoulders and the way she moans when he connects them with his tongue. One hand snakes around her thigh, fingers stroking up to the place where her hip meets her bottom, and were it not for his increasingly foggy (but intact!) memory he would have forgotten everything but the noise she makes when he traces his fingers over her clit, out of time with his thrusts, a low, throaty sound, and she pulls his hair to drag him closer.

“‘Steel my heart against the temptations of the wicked,’” he groans between the bites to his mouth, falling into his own rhythm deep inside her, “‘make me to rest in the warmest places.’”

She moves her hips with his, and he clenches his jaw to keep from babbling some sort of nonsense that just comes out in a low, ragged growl. “I think you’re beyond help,” she breathes, her hips driving him harder, deeper. “I think you’re already at least half wicked.”

“Maybe—maybe I’ll sell my bloody soul to a pirate.” He hooks an arm around her waist and gasps when she does that _thing_ with her hips again, pleasure pooling inside him, drunk on sensation and the singsong melody of Isabela’s voice. “Got to be worth more than gold.”

“Buy me a necklace instead,” she says, and then— “Oh- _oh_ —harder.”

Their tempo changes, faster, harder, and each thrust draws a rough sound from both of them, all the heat and the pull of their skin bringing him so close he can barely see straight. Probably. Actually, he’s pretty sure he can’t see anything at all right now that isn’t Isabela and he’s quickly losing the ability to think actual thoughts, so he blurts out the first verse that springs into his fevered mind. “‘Maker, though the darkness comes upon me, I shall embrace the Light. I shall weather the storm.’

She moans and her eyes fly open, bright and brown and sharper than the daggers at her back. “ _Harder_ ,” she says, and he puts a hand under her knee and hikes her leg up higher, feels her shiver at the change of angle, “or are you all talk, Ser Carver?”

If there’s one thing he hates (almost) more than being compared to his brother—and thank the Maker, Andraste and all the stars in the sky that isn’t happening right now—it’s being thought all talk and no muscle to back it up, all full of hot air—among other things.

So. Harder, and _harder_ , until every breath is a short, willowy gasp and Isabela’s fingers are clutching at his neck when he finds her clit again, moving in long, quick strokes, his other hand squeezing her breast. “‘You are a garden locked up, my Lady, my Bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain.’”

“Oh—”

Whatever she was about to say gets choked down in a moan, frantic and low; he knows she’s close and he is going to _hold on_ , damn it, not come before her like a—like the nineteen-year-old boy he _isn’t_. He pulls her closer, wanting nothing but the soft slide of his skin against hers, the hand tangled in his hair, and he moves as hard as he can, _deep_ , until she digs her nails into his scalp and bites her lip and he knows she wants it more than anything, but she won’t beg for it. Isabela never has to beg for it. He knows she would either throw him to the ground and take it for herself or really _really_ tear him open if he tried.

(Being thrown to the ground with Isabela riding him into the floorboards is actually a fantastic idea, and the tiny, bite-sized part of him that can still function files it away for future use. Hopefully. Probably.)

“‘Let Him take notice and shine upon thee,’” he pants against her lips, his fingers playing fast over her clit, “‘for thou has done His work on this day.’” There’s a low, rough sound and her head tips back against the wall, her whole body tensing around him as she comes, her hips still moving with him and, Maker, there was never anything so beautiful as Isabela, flushed with pleasure and want and clinging to the tendrils of her own ecstasy.

His pace changes again, faster, all heat and tension coiling tight inside him and it’s almost too much— _almost_ —until Isabela thrusts back against him, _hard_ , and then that’s it, he’s gone, nothing but black and white and stars behind his eyes and whatever nonsense he mumbles against her ear, pleasure blooming through his body until he’s blind with it.

It takes a bit to catch his breath and get his bearings about him again, and when he does, Isabela still has her hand threaded through his hair and she’s grinning at him, breathless and disheveled and fucking gorgeous, and all he wants is to stay here in this dusty old alcove, sweaty and sticky and lethargic, soft inside Isabela with their skin pressed together. He almost wishes they were at The Hanged Man, so they could stay on her bed and do it all again. They could just talk all night, and he’d wake up and maybe she’d even still be there in the morning.

But. Always _but_ , always almost-but-not-quite.

There are crazed Carta dwarves, possibly darkspawn, possibly any of the other numerous and unpleasant things that are likely to inhabit remote, abandoned structures in the middle of nowhere. And his brother needs him. He knows this.

“So. The Chant _does_ have a few merits,” she says, tilting her head up to kiss him again and then untangling herself, running a hand through her hair. Her voice is still low, still a little jagged-edged and wild, and she doesn’t even bother with clothes at first; just stretches out and gives him another once-over, wears her own skin like some women wear silk and diamonds. “How quaint.”

“More than a few.” His shirt is utterly useless but he slides it back on anyway and just hopes his armor doesn’t rub in bad places. “I’d be happy to show you some more. When I’m not battling blood mages, and all.”

“Mmm, I’ll bet you would.” He watches her pull her underclothes up again, sweat still glistening between her breasts and along the planes of her back and stomach. “Trying to save my poor soul in between the abominations.”

“You said you didn’t have one left.”

She laughs, his favorite laugh in all the world and just for him. It’s intoxicating. “Neither will you when I’m through.” She’s grinning again, lopsided, and she picks up his breastplate and helps him into it, which is really wonderful because his bones all feel like strawberry jam right now. He’ll be worse than useless for the rest of the day.

“Suppose we do this again,” he starts, still high on the aftershocks and Isabela.

“Suppose we do.”

“There are so many verses,” he whispers, and her hands catch over one of his gauntlets. “So many about the Maker’s Bride, about her delicate fruit. So many about her rich gardens, how they overflow with wine and honey.”

Her teeth are at his ear again and it thrills him even as he’s utterly, entirely spent. “You sweet thing,” she breathes, “you really _have_ grown so much.”

He’s grinning like an idiot all the way back down the hallway until they find his brother and Sebastian, because, yes, they are definitely going to do this again. All of this. The Chant part, and the flirting part, and especially the sex in hallways part, and the promise of more of _this_ is enough to have him flushed and practically floating by the time they catch up with Garrett, who just rolls his eyes and scoffs.

“How old are you supposed to be, again?” he asks, though he looks more amused than irritated. Garrett’s mouth always twitches very slightly when he’s trying not to laugh, and he’s doing it right now.

“Oh, he’s old enough.” Isabela is attaching herself to his arm again and he can’t help it; he smiles. “ _Such_ a gentleman. Knows exactly where to swing that sword of his, and _how_.”

Garrett sighs, says, “ _Car_ ver,” the way he always does when he’s exasperated or angry or trying to act like something isn’t funny when it definitely is. “I really, _really_ don’t want to know.”

Isabela skips off ahead of them, all rough-and-tumble pirate swagger, and Carver watches for a moment and falls into step beside Sebastian, who hasn’t said a word and seems to be making a point of not looking at him, which is odd. Normally, he’s amiable enough, even if he ignores Carver half the time. Because of the blasphemies, he reminds himself. Which he has just committed. Possibly where Sebastian could hear. Possibly enough for ten men several lifetimes over.

“All right, there?” he asks, because he would really rather this not be more awkward than it has to be, and it’s already really, really awkward. He would also rather not get the lecture from his brother like he’s five years old.

The look Sebastian shoots him is—well, it’s not _horrified_ , exactly, but it’s sort of tight, pinched, somewhere between scandalized and appalled with maybe just a dash of amused. “I would pray for you,” he says, his brogue slightly thicker than it usually is, rolling and flowing the way Merrill’s sometimes does, “but I fear my words would be wasted on one who corrupts the Chant as you have.”

Oh. He definitely heard some of that, then, and Carver can feel himself turn a little red like a child who’s just been caught doing something he ought not. And, well. That’s exactly it, isn’t it? “I, uh,” what is he supposed to do, here? Say he didn’t mean to apply the Chant as liberally and sleazily as he pleased and fuck Isabela in a semi-concealed alcove? Because he definitely meant to do all of that. “I’ll pray with you,” he offers, and this seems to sort of pacify Sebastian, who narrows his too-blue eyes and looks straight ahead. No sense making this any worse than it already is, after all.

“‘If you do not know, most beautiful of women,’” Sebastian says, and part of him wonders if this is some sick sort of test, but Carver knows this verse so well he can say it forward, backward and sideways, “‘follow the tracks of the sheep and graze your young goats by the tents of the shepherds.’”

“‘I liken you, my darling,’” Carver picks up, and Isabela is back in sight again, the gold on her arms making her glitter like a crown jewel in the dark, “‘to a halla among the Empress’ chariot horses.’”

The priest hums, apparently satisfied with this and completely unaware of the dark, conveniently secluded alleys where Carver’s thoughts are headed, and continues. “‘Come with me from Tevinter, my Bride, come with me from Tevinter. Descend from the crest of Sundermount, from the bottom of Blackmarsh, the salt flats of Nevarra, from the dragons’ dens and the mountain haunts of wyverns.’”

“‘You have stolen my heart, my Prophet, my Bride,’” he says, watching Isabela’s hips sway in front of him, remembering the Chant, remembering the way her lips felt on his, her voice, her skin, everything sewn into the fabric of his memory, right where it belongs. “‘You have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace,’” he says, and Isabela’s laugh is dancing through him, surging through his blood like a brand new muscle memory.


End file.
